While Lincoln did not personally desire any type of judicial appointment or office, he did make it a common practice to write letters of endorsement on behalf of those individuals he felt were best qualified and suited for positions. That is not to say that he was not qualified, just that he did not exhibit the drive to pursue a position. In fact, Lincoln was so qualified and capable that when Judge David Daviscould not attend to court on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, he would have an attorney sit as judge for a few cases or even for a few days. It is known that Davis asked Lincoln to act as judge several times in the 1850s, however, Lincoln was not the only person whom Davis appointed.

Lincoln had no desire to be the state’s attorney either, although he did assist Ward Hill Lamon, when he served as state’s attorney on the Eighth Circuit. Lincoln wrote indictments, served as co-counsel, and even acted as state’s attorney’s representative lawyer in several criminal cases.

Lincoln branched out in his legal practice and honed his skills this way, yet there were a few times when Lincoln seemed to put his legal practice on hold altogether, such as when he stumped for the Whig Party in various regions of the state during election years in the 1840s. Most of the time, however, Lincoln was more than capable of combining the two great passions of his life. For example, while campaigning for the Whigs in southern Illinois in 1840, he gave a political speech in Jefferson County and while court was in session argued a case in the Circuit Court.

At another time, during his term in Congress, while Lincoln did not handle any cases in Illinois…he did argue one case and became involved in two others before the United States Supreme Court, since he was already in Washington DC.

In yet another example, Lincoln wrote to some clients in March of 1855, after losing the 1854 Senate election, that he had dabbled in politics and neglected business, and that since he had lost, he directly return to his legal practice.

During his 1858 Senatorial campaign against Stephen A. Douglas, Lincoln did not practice law for much of the summer and fall, but he returned to law after his loss and maintained correspondences with everyone involved from his end, which helped him gather and solidify support for the presidential election in 1860.

In May of 1860, the Republican National Convention nominated Lincoln for president and his primary delegation was made up of lawyers and personalities that Lincoln had met and befriended from his time on the 8th Judicial Circuit, including Judge David Davis, who operated as a campaign manager for Lincoln during that time. Throughout the campaigning and into the fall, Lincoln still practiced as a lawyer and in November of 1860, Lincoln won the election for the presidency over his political rival Stephen A. Douglas and the other candidates John C. Breckenridge and John Bell. During the winter, Lincoln wrapped up his legal business with Herndon, and left for Washington in February 1861.

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According to Herndon's, biography of his famous law partner, Lincoln wanted the partnership sign to hang undisturbed and “give our clients to understand that the election of a President makes no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon.” He told Herndon that if he returned he wanted to resume their practice of law “as if nothing had ever happened.” Lincoln’s next and final trip home was after his assassination. After he left Central Illinois and Springfield, he never again practiced law in the courts, the life that had made him the man he became.

Judge David Davis

David Davis was born to a wealthy family in Cecil County, Maryland, on March 9, 1815, where he
attended the public schools. After graduating from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, in 1832,
he went on to study law at Yale University. Upon his graduation from Yale in 1835, Davis moved
to Bloomington, Illinois, to practice law. He also served as a member of the Illinois House of
Representatives in 1845 and a delegate to the Illinois constitutional convention in McLean
County, 1847.

In 1844, Davis won election as a Whig to the Illinois legislature, and four years later was
elected Judge of Illinois' Eighth Judicial Circuit, where he served on the bench during Lincoln's
remaining years as an attorney on the circuit. From 1848 to 1862, Davis presided over the local
judicial circuit, the same circuit where attorney Abraham Lincoln was practicing and they rode
together for many years. The two became close friends, and Davis worked diligently as Lincoln's
campaign manager at the 1860 Republican nominating convention in Chicago. In 1862, President
Lincoln appointed Davis to the United States Supreme Court, where Davis wrote the majority
opinion in Ex parte Milligan, a landmark decision restricting the rights of military courts to try
civilians. In 1877, he resigned from the court after being elected to the United States Senate by
the Illinois legislature. He retired from the Senate in 1883 and spent the remainder of his life
at Clover Lawn. He died on June 26, 1886.

Davis had the distinction of being the largest landowner in Illinois. Although he was not as
wealthy as the state's wealthiest businessman, Cyrus McCormick, Davis owned more land than any
other man in Illinois. At his death, his estate was valued at between four to five million
dollars-a huge fortune in his day. He is interred at Evergreen Cemetery and his home is listed on
the National Registry of Historic Places.

Ward Hill Lamon

Lamon was born near Winchester, Virginia, on January 6, 1828. Lamon studied medicine for
two years and then moved to Danville, Illinois when he was nineteen to live with relatives.
Giving up on medicine, Lamon attended the University of Louisville to receive his law degree
and was admitted to the Illinois bar in 1851. In 1850, he moved back to Virginia, married
Angelina Turner, and then returned to Illinois to practice law.

Angelina died in April 1859, leaving a daughter, Dorothy, who was raised in Danville by
Lamon's sister, Mrs. William Morgan. In November 1860, Lamon married Sally Logan, daughter
of Judge Stephen T. Logan. Logan had been Lincoln's law partner from 1841 to 1844. Lamon's
professional association with Lincoln started in 1852, when he became Lincoln's law partner
in Danville, Illinois. Their partnership lasted up until 1857 when Lamon became the
prosecuting attorney for the Old Eighth Judicial district and subsequently moved to
Bloomington, Illinois in 1858.

While Lamon had Southern sympathies and his hatred of abolitionism set him apart from Lincoln,
they remained friends, despite their very different characters. Lamon joined the then-young
Republican Party and campaigned for Lincoln in 1860. Lincoln was up against New York Senator
William Seward for the Republican nomination, and Lamon proved his friendship by printing up
extra tickets for the convention to fill the hall with Lincoln supporters. When Lincoln was
elected President, Lamon hoped for a foreign diplomatic post, but received a letter from his
friend that said, "Dear Hill, I need you. I want you to go to Washington with me and be
prepared for a long stay."

Lamon then accompanied him as he traveled from Springfield, Illinois to Washington D.C. in
February 1861. Shortly after his inauguration in 1861, Lincoln appointed Lamon United States
Marshal of the District of Columbia; he resigned his commission in June 1865, following the
assassination. He returned to law until 1879 when, due to the failed reception of his Lincoln
biography and his failing health, he resigned the practice of the law. He later died in West
Virginia on May 7, 1893.

Stephen Arnold Douglas

Douglas was born in Brandon, Vermont on April 23, 1813. In 1834, at the age of 21, he was
admitted to the bar of Illinois and one year later in 1835, he was appointed the State's
Attorney for the First Judicial Circuit of Illinois. In 1836, he was elected to the Illinois
State Legislature and was also made the Register of the Land Office in Springfield, Illinois
all before the age of 24. During this time he argued several cases with and against a young
Abraham Lincoln.

After a brief stint as the Illinois Secretary of State in 1840, Stephen A. Douglas was
appointed to the Illinois State Supreme Court in 1841, as the youngest justice on the court
at the age of 27. In 1843, Douglas was elected to the US House of representatives and stayed
after two successful re-elections, until his appointment to the US Senate, where he spent the
rest of his life.

Stephen A. Douglas was the Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860, but lost to the
Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a
Senate contest following a famed series of debates. Nicknamed the "Little Giant" because of
his short stature, Douglas was considered by his contemporaries to be a "giant" in
politics-the cause for his nickname of "The Little Giant." Douglas was well-known as a
resourceful party leader, and an adroit, ready, skillful tactician in debate and passage of
legislation.

As chairman of the Committee on Territories, Douglas dominated the Senate in the 1850s. He
was largely responsible for the Compromise of 1850 that apparently settled slavery issues.
However, in 1854 he reopened the slavery question by the highly controversial Kansas-Nebraska
Act that allowed the people of the new territories to decide for themselves whether or not
to have slavery (which had been prohibited by earlier compromises). The protest movement
against this became the Republican Party. When civil war came in April 1861, he rallied his
supporters to the Union with all his energies, but he died a few weeks later death at the age
of 48, on June 3, 1861, after contracting typhoid fever.

William Henry Herndon

Herndon's family moved from Kentucky to Springfield when he was five. Herndon attended
Illinois College from 1836-1837. Following college, he returned to Springfield, where
he clerked until 1841, when he went into law practice with Lincoln. Both men were members
of the Whig Party and joined the fledgling Republican Party after the dissolution of the
Whigs. In 1858, Herndon conducted opposition research in the Illinois State Library to be
used against Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 presidential race.

Herndon was a much stauncher opponent of slavery than Lincoln and claimed that he helped
change Lincoln's views on the subject. He felt that Lincoln acted too slowly against the
issue following his election as President. Herndon felt that the only way to rid the country
of slavery was "through bloody revolution." Following Lincoln's assassination, Herndon began
to collect stories of Lincoln's life from those who knew him. Herndon aspired to write a
faithful portrait of his friend and law partner, based on his own observations and on
hundreds of letters and interviews he had compiled for the purpose.

He was determined to present Lincoln as a man, rather than a saint, and to reveal things that
the prevailing Victorian era conventions said should be left out of the biography of a great
national hero.

Herndon believed that Lincoln's "official" biographers, Nicolay and Hay, would tell the story
of Lincoln "with the classes as against the masses." Numerous obstacles kept Herndon from
writing the planned book until he met a young collaborator, Jesse W. Weik, who moved the
project to completion in 1888. The biography finally was published in 1889, titled Herndon's
Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life.

Herndon died in 1891 and is buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, the same cemetery as
Lincoln. His story is a complicated one, surrounded by much controversy, especially regarding
his works concerning Lincoln and his literary treatment of Mary Lincoln.